If it feels like hospital services is lacking at Henry Ford Hospital, it’s partly because the hospital is facing a nursing shortage.
The real is, according to the Detroit Free Press, “since 2020, Michigan has lost 1,700 staffed hospital beds because of a lack of staffing — creating longer waits in emergency departments; difficulty transferring patients to hospitals better suited to their needs, and fewer services, particularly in rural areas, according to the Michigan Health and Hospital Association.”
The nursing shortage has been going on for a long while, and the pandemic exacerbated people leaving the profession.
In March, Michigan hospitals had 27,000 open jobs, Brian Peters, chief executive officer of the Michigan Health and Hospital Association, told the Free Press.
This loss is in line with what’s happening nationally: the shortage of nurses is estimated to range from 1 million to 2 million. Michigan lost five to 10 percent of that total, or 100,000 nurses. And nursing schools aren’t graduating enough students to fill in that loss.
Ford’s solution is to hire nurses from the Philippines to fill in the gap, which is also in line with other hospital practices. Hopefully, Ford will be on the cutting edge of employment and offer a cultural-competency course on anti-Blackness for the new nurses.
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